Creating textures via the DAZ Studio Shader Mixer tab? Modifying existing product’s texture maps with your graphics application? Creating your own texture map and UV mapping from scratch for an object with no texture? They will all have extremely different approaches.

@Sean Riesch: I need a basic texturing tutorial for texturing a Genesis figure with a realistic skin patterns making sure my seams match and little tricks to do and snags to look out for type thingee. I need it as simple as possible.

Have an image editor that works with layers ... learn how to use the basic functions such as area selections, reverse selections, de-colour, re-colour, sharpen/blur, etc.

Find or buy skin resource materials that plainly state that you can do whatever it is you want to do with them. For eg. not all purchased merchant resources can be used to create freeware items. There are quite a few resource materials available on sharecg.com which are great for practicing with. Renderosity also has some decent mr materials [free and low cost]. Be prepared to invest some $.

HoBobo has lots of free digital skin textures at sharecg.com. Check the texture folders for the .jpegs.

Be patient.

Making a decent skin texture, esp a complete set takes time. You might please a few people with it but never everybody. So please yourself with the efforts you put into it.

The basic bump/displacement maps we were once taught TO use; now some rather verbose people like to shout out that those are bad BUT fail to tell us what would be better. Used carefully and in the right places, they are certainly better than nothing.
Again, to keep the various programs to be using them in mind; how D/S and Poser interpret black and white images are completely opposite. This is nothing to argue about as to which is right or wrong or whatever; it’s a fact of life called proprietary copyrights and was done very intentionally at the time. Only mentioned because if using b/w for b/d; make 2, one the opposite of the other.
White/Black are the extremes; shades of grey the inbetweens.

Find the skin set you wish to start working with; make COPIES, lots of COPIES.
Make one set b/w and try it on the character in the staging program.
Do the seams show, do they match.
Paint inside the lines BUT also put same colour around outside the edges - seam allowance!

Creating a .psd file ... have a body/head/limbs in it.
Whatever shades you apply to one; do it to them all at the same time ....
Keep a layer with the shades colours painted on it for easy referral back to ...
Periodically save out a COPY OF each body/face/limb texture and apply it to the figure ... make sure it’s all going the way you want it to.

Depending upon the usage of guidelines, you’ll need to change maybe 30% of any mr before redistributing it.
That’s not quite as awesomely hard as it sounds, once you see some of them you’ll understand

I wouldn’t even consider trying to do a realistic skin without a 3D paint program, at least to help with the seams. There are several available. I happen to like Blacksmith3D, but Carrara also has a 3D paint feature, and there are free ones out there, depending on your OS. They make placement of other visual features, e.g. moles, tattoos, etc. a lot easier, as well. I use them for complicated clothing textures, too.

@Sean Riesch: I need a basic texturing tutorial for texturing a Genesis figure with a realistic skin patterns making sure my seams match and little tricks to do and snags to look out for type thingee. I need it as simple as possible.

Dreamlight had some good tutorials on texturing a character but you need to be a member to access them…

@Sean Riesch: I need a basic texturing tutorial for texturing a Genesis figure with a realistic skin patterns making sure my seams match and little tricks to do and snags to look out for type thingee. I need it as simple as possible.

Even saying you want to create a realistic skin for Genesis leaves a lot of room for decisions, which are bound to make the directions more complicated… Or possibly too general to be useful. But here are a few suggestions:

- As Patience55 says, start with a seam guide. What I usually do when texturing a new model is apply the seam guide as a diffuse texture, so I can see where the different parts go. I like to generate my seam guides with Stitch Witch, which lets me quickly and easily create guides that fill in different mat zones, groups, or combinations of the two in different colors. (Genesis doesn’t have groups the way legacy Poser models do, but showing the mat zones can be very helpful.)

- Also, for reference only, look at the texture files and settings for a character you admire. If you’re working in DS, you’ll probably want to use the Human Surface Shader (HSS). In Poser, most texture artists seem to make their own Materials to provide the equivalent features, like secularity effects or sub-surface scattering. I assume Carrara users have their own methods of supporting these features in their Materials tools, ditto for Bryce, etc. Either way, get familiar with the options of the program(s) you intend to render in. The different programs actually use different rendering engines with different options and features, so for the top level of quality, the same skin has to be configured separately for each.

- You are probably going to be making at least three image maps per surface, possibly more.
- Diffuse is the color the skin starts as. Think of it as the “paint” layer. In addition to the obvious color differences for eyes, lips, etc., remember that the palms of the hands and soles of the feet are usually a lighter color than the rest. Arms and faces are often more tanned (and weathered) than the rest of the body. Don’t forget that bodies are not symmetrical if you add moles, freckles, etc.
- You will probably want a displacement map for moles, wrinkles, scars, etc. this must be hand-made—you can use the diffuse as a guide for positioning elements, but moles, for example, would be dark on the skin diffuse but light on the displacement map (for DS). Freckles would not have any displacement.
- You should create a specularity strength map, especially for the face. An airbrushed light gray on neutral or darker gray will work well for the “T” zone of brows, nose, and chin, which tend to be oilier and more reflective than the rest of the skin. You may also want a specularity color map. Take a look at the specularity colors used in characters you like.
- I like a slight, fine-grained noise pattern for a bump map for most skin areas, with less noise on the palms of the hands and other smoother areas, and a bit more noise for more weathered parts of the skin. It just adds the effect of a bit of roughness on ordinary skin surfaces. Major surface features should be created through displacement.

- If your rendering software supports it, you’ll probably want to use subsurface scattering (SSS). Again, look at existing textures. Most artists seem to give the diffuse a slightly blue cast and set the SSS to pale red. This will vary a lot depending on ethnicity, which can alter the amount and type of pigment in the skin (diffuse). If you’re trying to render Mr. Spock, you’ll want blue-green for the SSS color.

- Sometimes people will add a bit of ambient to eye whites to make them stand out more. I do this with anime characters, but not realistic characters.

You will likely use a higher resolution map for the face than most other parts of the body, depending on the final image you have in mind.

The basic bump/displacement maps we were once taught TO use; now some rather verbose people like to shout out that those are bad BUT fail to tell us what would be better.

Ignore them. The issue is simply to look at real skin and try to make a bump/displacement map that allows the user to replicate it as best as possible. What goes inward should be darker than what is flat, and what goes above the surrounding pixels should be lighter. Most of the skin for the face is purely flat for a baby (supposing the mesh has enough detail to resolve the baby face), so his/her bump map could theoretically be completely grey 127. While a grown upwill have a much more complicated map
The shout-downers presumably use shaders to make displacement which is a great idea in principle, but making a decent displacement shader for a human face, while certainly possible, is nonetheless Hard or Very Hard. I have yet to see a decent such shader in the Poserverse. BagginsBill has an almost acceptable one on this fellow here: http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?64789-Which-node-SubsurfaceSkin-or-Scatter-Blinn which looks great as a render, but if that is the shader solution, I’ll take displacement maps any day.

The basic bump/displacement maps we were once taught TO use; now some rather verbose people like to shout out that those are bad BUT fail to tell us what would be better.

Ignore them. The issue is simply to look at real skin and try to make a bump/displacement map that allows the user to replicate it as best as possible. What goes inward should be darker than what is flat, and what goes above the surrounding pixels should be lighter. Most of the skin for the face is purely flat for a baby (supposing the mesh has enough detail to resolve the baby face), so his/her bump map could theoretically be completely grey 127. While a grown upwill have a much more complicated map
The shout-downers presumably use shaders to make displacement which is a great idea in principle, but making a decent displacement shader for a human face, while certainly possible, is nonetheless Hard or Very Hard. I have yet to see a decent such shader in the Poserverse. BagginsBill has an almost acceptable one on this fellow here: http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?64789-Which-node-SubsurfaceSkin-or-Scatter-Blinn which looks great as a render, but if that is the shader solution, I’ll take displacement maps any day.

The basic bump/displacement maps we were once taught TO use; now some rather verbose people like to shout out that those are bad BUT fail to tell us what would be better.

Ignore them. The issue is simply to look at real skin and try to make a bump/displacement map that allows the user to replicate it as best as possible. What goes inward should be darker than what is flat, and what goes above the surrounding pixels should be lighter. Most of the skin for the face is purely flat for a baby (supposing the mesh has enough detail to resolve the baby face), so his/her bump map could theoretically be completely grey 127. While a grown upwill have a much more complicated map
The shout-downers presumably use shaders to make displacement which is a great idea in principle, but making a decent displacement shader for a human face, while certainly possible, is nonetheless Hard or Very Hard. I have yet to see a decent such shader in the Poserverse. BagginsBill has an almost acceptable one on this fellow here: http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?64789-Which-node-SubsurfaceSkin-or-Scatter-Blinn which looks great as a render, but if that is the shader solution, I’ll take displacement maps any day.

It looks to me like that thread is more about how to handle subsurface scattering than displacement or bump maps…. I didn’t read past the page you linked, though. I can’t imagine trying to handle displacement procedurally.

I tried to upload a set of Genesis parts, split into the maps they use for Painting in Sculptris .... But they removed my post and sent me a PM warning .... It’s fairly easy to do using Wings3d or Blender. Just select all the Parts that have the same Map .. ie Lips, Nostril, Face ..... then do Export Selected ..... Genesis will work in Sculptris and you can paint your own maps .... but your stuck at 2048 .... not as much detail but it works and looks good!!

The basic bump/displacement maps we were once taught TO use; now some rather verbose people like to shout out that those are bad BUT fail to tell us what would be better.

Ignore them. The issue is simply to look at real skin and try to make a bump/displacement map that allows the user to replicate it as best as possible. What goes inward should be darker than what is flat, and what goes above the surrounding pixels should be lighter. Most of the skin for the face is purely flat for a baby (supposing the mesh has enough detail to resolve the baby face), so his/her bump map could theoretically be completely grey 127. While a grown upwill have a much more complicated map
The shout-downers presumably use shaders to make displacement which is a great idea in principle, but making a decent displacement shader for a human face, while certainly possible, is nonetheless Hard or Very Hard. I have yet to see a decent such shader in the Poserverse. BagginsBill has an almost acceptable one on this fellow here: http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?64789-Which-node-SubsurfaceSkin-or-Scatter-Blinn which looks great as a render, but if that is the shader solution, I’ll take displacement maps any day.

It looks to me like that thread is more about how to handle subsurface scattering than displacement or bump maps…. I didn’t read past the page you linked, though. I can’t imagine trying to handle displacement procedurally.

Oh the topic is a very large basket “A very basic texturing step-by step tutorial request” so that would include ‘everything’. Was then narrowed down some to Genesis.

I tried to upload a set of Genesis parts, split into the maps they use for Painting in Sculptris .... But they removed my post and sent me a PM warning .... It’s fairly easy to do using Wings3d or Blender. Just select all the Parts that have the same Map .. ie Lips, Nostril, Face ..... then do Export Selected ..... Genesis will work in Sculptris and you can paint your own maps .... but your stuck at 2048 .... not as much detail but it works and looks good!!

I do something similar with 3d Paint. Basically getting the seams right and basic fill in, then use PSP to improve the overall look and enlarge the image(s).